The international team investigating the downing of flight MH17 in July 2014, said on Thursday the Buk missile which shot down the passenger plane originated from a unit of the Russian army from Kursk in Russia. All 298 passengers and crew, which included mainly Dutch citizens, were killed in the disaster, which took place as the plane flew over Eastern Ukraine on its way to Kuala Lumpur. The investigators told a news conference on Thursday they have now concluded the missile came from a Russian army unit after extensive comparative research based on several images of the Buk. ‘The analysis of those produces a number of characteristics and the combination is so special that that can be considered as a fingerprint,’ the interim report on the air disaster said. This means that people within the brigade and close to it will be aware of the operation in which the missile was deployed, the investigators say. They are now calling on insiders and eyewitnesses to come forward. ‘Who formed part of the crew? What were their instructions? Who was responsible for the operational deployment on 17 July 2017?,’ Dutch police chief Wilbert Paulissen said at Thursday’s press conference. ‘We are convinced that many people have this information. They may be members of the 53rd Brigade, but also relatives, friends or acquaintances.'
Chief investigator Fred Westerbeke said on Thursday the probe was now in its 'last phase' but said there is 'still work to be done' before charges can be brought.
The trial of any suspects arrested in the shooting down of flight MH17 will be held in the Netherlands under an agreement reached with the countries leading the joint probe. More >

Prime minister Mark Rutte is flying back from a trade mission to India a day early to discuss the new findings about the downing of flight MH17 with the rest of the cabinet on Friday. On Thursday, the team in charge of the investigation said that the Buk missile which hit the passenger plane had come from a unit of the Russian army stationed in Kursk. 'This is an important development and so I have decided to return to the Netherlands, because I want to chair the cabinet meeting at which this will be discussed,' Rutte said in a reaction. The official cabinet reaction to the new findings will be discussed on Friday morning, but foreign minister Stef Blok has already said 'an important piece of the puzzle is in place'. The four coalition parties say the issue should now be raised at the United Nations Security Council. In particular, they hope that Russia will be reprimanded for failing to cooperate sufficiently with the investigation. Russia Russia, meanwhile, has issued a statement denying all responsibility for the air disaster, in which nearly 300 people died. 'Not one Russian missile has crossed the border between Russia and Ukraine,' Dutch media quoted the Russian ministry of defence as saying. Piet Ploeg of the relatives foundation Vliegramp MH17 told broadcaster NOS he now expects the Dutch government to take action, for example, by taking Russia to court for complicity in the downing of the plane. 'Until now, everyone has been cautious, but now it is being openly said that Russia kept the information presented today to itself, Ploeg said. More >

Small Dutch organisations do not have to fear immediate fines if their systems are not yet properly equipped to deal with new EU privacy legislation known as GDPR, justice minister Sander Dekker has told broadcaster NOS. The legislation which comes into effect on Friday, applies to every company and organisation which 'processes people's data' However, according to NOS, Dekker says that small organisations will not be immediately liable if they are not fully GDPR compliant. 'It is not the case that on May 26, inspectors will be on the doorstep of a village football club,' he said. 'But if big firms are mucking around and yours or my personal information becomes public, then they have a problem.' The new rules mean companies and organisations, including local sports clubs, have to be able to show what information they hold about private individuals and what they do with it. Compliance falls under the responsibility of the privacy watchdog Authoriteit Persoonsgegevens which said earlier this month it did not have enough funding to properly monitor GDPR. Dekker has said he will not make new funding available in the short term. Fines Fines for companies which break the law can amount up to €20m or 4% of annual turnover. Figures published by the small business association MKB Nederland earlier this month indicate that thousands of companies are not yet ready to introduce the new rules and 30% had not heard of it at all. The race to meet Friday's deadline has lead to email inboxes clogging up with mailing list messages urging people to confirm they still want to receive newsletters. More >

Amsterdam's new coalition presented its plans for the city on Thursday, with an emphasis on sustainability and inclusion. Describing the plan as 'ambitious', GroenLinks leader Rutger Groot Wassink said things in the city will change. 'I have always say the city needs to become more sustainable, more fair and more democratic and this agreement does that,' he said. 'We all want Amsterdam to be the greenest city in the Netherlands, and perhaps in Europe. Amsterdam’s new administration is a left-leaning coalition made up of GroenLinks, D66, the Socialists and the Labour party. GroenLinks was the big winner in the local elections in March but the other three parties in the coalition all saw their support shrink. The new agreement includes higher taxes for tourists and home owners, an increase in parking fees for non-residents in the city centre to €7.50 a hour and a greater emphasis on green energy and solar power. 'No roof can go unused in our sustainability targets,' the agreement states. Housing Housing was the main issue in the local election campaign and the coalition plans to build 7,500 new homes a year, in an effort to tackle the city's housing crisis. Of them, 2,500 will be rent controlled and 1670 will have a 'middle' rent of between €710 and €971 a month. The administration will also lobby national government to allow it to regulate the middle rental sector and to reserve half of such properties for Amsterdammers who leave a rent-controlled property behind. Future ambitions include ensuring the city is gas free by 2040, 10 years ahead of the government's schedule, and potentially removing all car parking spaces from the city centre canals. Tourism Last week the four parties unveiled their plans for dealing with mass tourism, including sharply higher tourist taxes, a clampdown on attractions such as beer bikes and limits on holiday rentals. Next Wednesday, a full meeting of the council will discuss the plans and the naming of the eight aldermen. Fireworks The Parool's political correspondents Michiel Couzy and Ruben Koops say in an analysis of the new authority and its plans that 'sparks will fly' as the left-wing city administration clashes with the right-leading coalition in national government. In particular, support for a large group of undocumented refugees is already causing friction, they point out. Last week, a majority of MPs called on the city not to open new accommodation for asylum seekers who have lost their claims for asylum. Two days later, the city announced it would do exactly that. Schiphol airport and plans to increase the amount of rent-controlled housing in the city are likely to provide further fireworks, Couzy and Koops say. More >

The Netherlands is richer and more prosperous than it thought - due in part to recalculations of the value of the country's illegal marijuana industry. National statistics office CBS said on Thursday that gross domestic product in 2015 was €6.6bn higher than expected - a 1% increase taking total GDP to €690bn. The figure includes an estimate of the amount generated through illegal economic activity and that has been increased from €2.5bn to €4.8bn, mainly due to the production of marijuana. The original estimate was based on 40% of locally-grown marijuana being discovered by police, but they now say only around 20% is confiscated. This means that marijuana production adds €2.3bn more to the economy than earlier thought. This could mean than the Netherlands has to contribute more money to the EU coffers - contributions are based on economic size. However, at the end of next month, the CBS will publish revised GDP figures covering 1995 up to the first quarter of this year which may alter the impact, the CBS said. In 2016, the CBS said the amount earned in the Netherlands through drugs, prostitution and other criminal activities is some €2.7bn a year. More >

Next month's Amsterdam bourse launch of Adyen, the fast-growing and very profitable global electronics payments company, is expected to value the company at between €5bn and €10bn. The IPO will be the largest since the re-launch of ABN Amro bank in 2015 the Financieele Dagblad reported on Thursday. Growth companies like Adyen, founded in Amsterdam in 2006, are not valued by traditional methods, thus the wide margin. A closer valuation of the company will emerge on the road shows ahead of the bourse launch. The last internal valuation of the company for its option programme at end-2017 put its value at €3bn. Adyen's payment platform is used by such companies as Facebook, Uber and eBay and the Bijenkorf, Coolblue and Rituals in the Netherlands. The company serves as link between physical stores and webstores on the one hand and banks and credit card companies on the other. The IPO will give external investors - Temasek, Iconic, Index Ventures and General Atlantic have roughly 50% of the shares - an opportunity to cash in. In total about 15% of shares will be floated. All of Adyen’s 750 staff, from top management down to the coffee lady will benefit from the IPO, as all have been granted stock options, the FD said. More >

The Netherlands has overtaken Switzerland and moved into fourth place in the latest global competitiveness rankings published by IMD. The top five most competitive economies in the world remain the same as in the previous year, but their order changed in the 2018 rankings. The United States, third last year, returns to the top spot, followed by Hong Kong, Singapore, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The Netherlands’ advance reflects a ‘balanced’ path to competitiveness, ranking in the top 10 in economic performance, government and business efficiency, IMD said. Switzerland declined mainly due to a slowdown in exports and, to a lesser extent, an increase in perceptions about threats of relocation of R&D facilities. The IMD World Competitiveness Center, a research group at IMD business school in Switzerland, has published the rankings every year since 1989. It compiles them using 258 indicators. ‘Hard’ data such as national employment and trade statistics are weighted twice as much as the ‘soft’ data from an executive opinion survey that measures the business perception of issues such as corruption, environmental concerns and quality of life. This year 63 countries were ranked. The Netherlands is also currently ranked 4th on the World Economic Forum‘s list of the 138 most competitive countries, behind Switzerland, the United States and Singapore. More >

Only four out of 10 popular methods to combat bullying in primary schools work, according to a new report by five universities and mental health monitor Trimbos Institute. Bullying is also more widespread than previously assumed, a survey among 8,000 children showed. Three anti-bullying programmes which involved the whole class were found to be effective (PRIMA, KiVA and Taakspel) while one (Alles Kidzzz) turned out to be the best of the individual approaches. Schools are required by law to teach children about bullying but are free to chose which method to use. The report showed 30% of primary school children experience instances of bullying at school. A smaller group, 1 in 14, is bullied more than once a week. Of this group a third does not tell anyone about the bullying and 97% of these children have been bullied over several years. According to researcher Bram Orobio Castro of Utrecht University, the figures are higher than previously thought. ‘We always knew that the number would probably be a bit higher but we didn’t think bullying would be as widespread as this,’ he told RTL Nieuws. Orobio Castro says children keep quiet out of fear the bullying will get worse or because they think they are to blame. ‘They are ashamed and feel they should solve the problem themselves. They feel that it is part of life and because they don’t tell anyone they develop a damaging mindset that isn’t corrected.’ Schools are obliged by law to monitor children’s well-being annually, and this includes bullying. It is vital, the researchers say, that children tell teachers and other adults if they are being bullied. The four best scoring programmes were shown to bring down instances of bullying within a year and these need to extended and used across the board, the researchers recommend. Mandatory use is not thought to be necessary because bullying does not occur in all schools. More >

Kraft Heinz, the world’s fifth-largest food and beverages concern, is to open a new €90m innovation centre in Amsterdam’s Zuidas business district next week. The innovation centre will employ 450 people and help develop 'the Kraft Heinz of the future', said Rafa Oliveira, who is in charge of the group’s operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, in an interview in Thursday's Telegraaf. ‘This is a huge step for us,’Oliveira told the paper. ‘We are not going to develop any new products, we are seeking new methods of growth.’ He said Kraft Heinz will be able to invest more in products and marketing through cost savings generated in Amsterdam. The company opted for Amsterdam because of the proximity of Schiphol airport as well as the city’s talented young labour market, he told the Telegraaf. The US-based group also operates an innovation centre in Nijmegen and a ketchup plant in Elst, for a total payroll of 800. Kraft Heinz, which was formed in July 2015 through the merger of two well-established American foods groups, books annual turnover of some €26bn and has more than 200 brand names. Last year, Kraft Heinz made a €134bn bid to acquire Anglo-Dutch Unilever. But swift action on Unilever’s part averted a takeover. Kraft Heinz has a number of very Dutch brand names, including De Ruijter, Venz, Honig en Karvan Cevitam in its portfolio. These stem from the 2001 acquisition by Heinz of Dutch foods group CSM. More >

The Netherlands needs to reduce the incentives given to both employers and employees to work via temporary and self-employment contracts, the European Commission said on Wednesday. This, the commission said, should go hand in hand with promoting adequate social protection for the self-employed, and tackle bogus self-employment. Brussels made the recommendations as part of its annual report on the Dutch economy. Self-employment has soared in the Netherlands in the past few years. The CBS said last year that roughly 1.8 million people in the Netherlands work as either full or part-time freelancers. Social security The commission points out that government measures to tackle bogus self- employment have been suspended until 2020 and warns that the self-employed are more often under- insured against disability, unemployment and old age. 'This could affect the sustainability of the social security system in the long run,' the report stated. Even though the Dutch labour market performs well overall, there is still untapped potential. 'In particular the high number of part-time working women and the employment situation of people with a migrant background remain an important challenge,' the commission points out. More >

A Dutch national has been arrested in Iraq on terrorism charges, the foreign affairs ministry has confirmed to website Nu.nl. No details about the man have been made public and it is unclear if he has formally asked for consular assistance. Nevertheless, officials are 'keeping an eye on the situation', the foreign ministry said. Earlier this week a Belgian national was sentenced to death in Iraq after he was found guilty of terrorism. Belgium has asked Iraq to commute the sentence to life in jail. More >